


There, Before My Bewildered Eyes

by northeto (Emiline)



Category: Babylon 5, Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: Confusion, Episode Tag, Family Issues, Gen, Suicide, The Corps is Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-24 02:32:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/934166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emiline/pseuds/northeto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post "Phoenix Rising" (Season 5, Episode 11).<br/><i>The Corps, which had prepared Bester for everything (he’d always believed), had never prepared him for this.</i><br/>In which Bester discovers that he is very, very wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There, Before My Bewildered Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILER: "Phoenix Rising" is the episode where Byron and some of his followers commit suicide rather than risk being taken by Bester and his gang.
> 
> A/N: B5 & its characters belong to J. Michael Straczynski. I'm just borrowing them for a bit. No profit made, no copyright infringement intended.

The Corps is Mother. The Corps is Father.

Trust the Corps.

The Corps is Truth.

 

The Corps taught Bester to think, to analyze, to understand, and how to see the world. The Corps reached into him and made him from the inside out.

 _The Shadows made us_ , Byron had claimed.

So what if they had? The Shadows could only have manipulated their genetics, not mold their souls. Their identities were the property of the Corps.

The Corps was Mother, the Corps was Father.

Bester had thought he and Byron were fundamentally the same. Bester picked his protégées with infinite care. The choices one made were so important.

The Corps had taught him and Byron how to understand the world. Bester had always believed that. In all the time that he’d been chasing after Byron, he’d never considered that Byron would choose death, or choose to attack his fellow telepaths. Byron, he’d believed, was misguided, not inherently different. But somehow, something was wrong. Byron had made a choice that Bester believed with all his heart was not there to be made.

 _There is no choice, other than us_ , his instructor had told him, long ago. _In the end, all telepaths will all come back to us. In the end, they will see the wisdom of the choices we give them. No telepaths make a choice we have not already offered. There are no others. They must choose to be with us, or they must choose to let us suppress their abilities. Even rogues are only those who have not made their final decision. We must find them, explain to them once more: The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. They must be made to understand that. We are not their enemies. We never willingly hurt our own. The mundanes are the enemy. Deep down, even the rogue telepaths know this. Know this: there is always hope to bring a rogue back into the fold._

The Corps, which had prepared Bester for everything (he’d always believed), had never prepared him for this. He had no language to come to grips with something that was an impossibility. What words were there for a betrayal so deep, so complete it defied a fundamental tenant of his faith?

Bester had believed this. He still believed it. He believed it as Byron and his followers burned in the fiery explosion of their own making. He believed it afterwards, when the team came to take away what remained. Telepaths did not turn on one another.  
Byron had been his protégée. How could Byron have changed so much? How could he have learned so little? How could Byron see Bester and his team, and choose violence and death?

_They will come back to us, because they are like us._

The Corps is Truth.

The Corps is Understanding.

But the infallible Corps had not foreseen this. They had failed. It didn’t make sense.

 _What has happened?_ he thought.

He found no answer.


End file.
